Social media has gained traction in promoting businesses. Twitter for business, for example, has become an integral part of any marketing strategy. Almost everyone today uses one social media platform or another, making it prudent for business owners to use social media to spur their businesses. Every social media platform promotes business in its unique way.
Twitter for Business
Twitter is amongst the most commonly used social media platforms. However, it is one of the most misunderstood since, unlike other platforms, which are all about connection, Twitter mainly focuses on public conversation and exposure. If you understand your way around it, you can market your business effectively. That way, you can:
- Drive a lot of traffic to your business
- Build your brand
- Increase sales
Is Twitter Useful for Business?
Twitter has more than three hundred million active users. These numbers make it an excellent social media platform for businesses to reach out to and connect with the new target market. A business looking to communicate with its fans and customers effectively should pick Twitter because many companies have seen tremendous growth when using Twitter to market their business. Additionally, the cost of promoting a business on Twitter is not high. Setting up and maintaining a Twitter business profile is easy too.
Benefits of Using Twitter for Your Business
Before choosing Twitter to market your business, knowing how it may benefit your business will determine whether the benefits align with your marketing goals. The common benefits you can get from using Twitter in your business are:
1. Twitter will help you connect to customers.
The rapid growth of Twitter provides an excellent opportunity for business owners to connect with potential customers. Both new and existing customers can be found on the platform. Your audience gets to interact with your brand actively and thus find the help they need and the solutions your business can offer.
2. Twitter will aid you in increasing your brand awareness.
The exponential growth of your social audience as your followers connect with their followers will help build your brand awareness. Additionally, Twitter also allows you to connect with new users using promotional ads. By selecting the right demographics and running ads, you can easily reach out to a new audience.
3. Twitter will help you build a channel for customer support.
The only way to know if your strategy is working is to understand what your users and other people say about your business and brand. Twitter can help you monitor what people are saying. You can, in that case, respond to queries and help resolve customer issues quickly. You can use Socialays to help you monitor your social media business accounts to avoid leaving any of your customers or interested followers hanging. Additionally, interacting with your followers can give you pointers on how to improve your products or services.
4. Twitter will help you build a community for your business.
Your Twitter business account followers build a community of people who can help their friends and followers find out about your business. The community you make for your business will create conversations about your business that widen your business’s reach.
5. Twitter will help you create a positive opinion for your business.
Quickly responding to queries and handling issues raised by your customers can help you build a positive rapport for your business. The swiftness of handling issues coupled with good customer service will have your customers singing praises about your company. This will, in turn, help create a positive opinion for your business.
Having goals before choosing Twitter for your business will help you make the best use of the social media platform.
Why You Should Use Twitter for Business?
There are very many reasons why you should choose Twitter to market your business. Twitter offers a business profile that can spur your business and offer you milestones to grow your business exponentially. Some of the reasons that should have you considering using Twitter for business is;
a) Twitter is open.
As a social network, Twitter has always aimed to promote open communication. Additionally, Twitter also aims to provide easy access for its users to connect with other members of the platform. Conversations between your prospective clients and your competitors or your audience and their followers are all open. This openness provides for excellent customer insight. As a business owner, these honest conversations can help you find potential clients for your business. The discussions give you an insight into what customers want, thus making pitching easy as you can design your pitch to perfectly fit their needs.
The openness on Twitter also helps prospective clients discover your brand and see how you engage existing customers. Prospective clients can make the decision to engage with you solely from how your engagement with others impresses them. This is why it is prudent to communicate with your customers responsibly and be proud of your brand.
With a lot of conversations and discussions going on at any given point in time, Twitter offers tools to help you find the conversations within your niche by using keywords to help save time and optimize the searching process.
b) Twitter provides two-way communication with your followers.
Similar to many other social media networks, Twitter provides for two-way communication. Your followers can react to anything you post, and you can also respond to their replies. Therefore, a business can take advantage of this feature and run promotional campaigns, push educational content, run opinion polls, and inform their audience about their company culture.
Posting diverse content will encourage your followers to actively participate in your conversation, thus growing your brand. The content you choose to share as a brand should evoke emotions and responses from your audience and communicate your values as a brand.
The two-way communication allows you to ask for feedback from those who have done business with you. This communication will let you know what to improve on in your service delivery and quell angry customers.
c) Twitter offers real-time conversations.
Twitter allows you to communicate with your customers in real-time. The advantage of this is that it makes response quick, thus making it a huge plus when it comes to solving issues raised by customers. Quickly resolving customer issues raises their satisfaction levels, and as such, the chance of doing business with you at another time or recommending you to their friends, families, and followers is high. This means growth for your business.
Since conversations are happening in real-time, you can also take part in conversations relating to your business. By taking part in such conversations, you are able to showcase your knowledgeability in the area of discussion that positioning yourself as a resourceful person. This show of expertise will, in turn, translate to more people seeing you as a leader and thus expanding your connections.
d) Twitter helps you identify and target customers easily.
The openness of Twitter makes the identification and targeting of customers very easy. With the information you can obtain from Twitter, developing the proper context to approach your target customers becomes a walk in the park. Twitter provides you with the ability to search for the information you need on a particular persona. Additionally, Twitter ads also allow you to make your ads based on the person you are interested in by allowing you to choose different objectives and a variety of demographic data.
e) Twitter can help drive traffic to your business website.
Most people who visit a Twitter profile are likely to visit the website linked to that profile. This detail means that most of your Twitter followers will visit your website, thus driving traffic to your business. In addition to the link on your bio, you can share the link to your website in your posts. Every time you create a new post with new content on your website, you can share the link on your Twitter profile with a catchy phrase that will motivate your followers to view it.
f) Twitter is the best in terms of customer support.
The fact the conversations on Twitter happen in real-time ensures that everyone there has an excellent asset when it comes o handling customer support. Twitter provides you with a constant feed dedicated to your customer queries, making it very easy for you and your customer support team to handle questions efficiently. Customers with issues that require prompt handling can quickly get sorted since you can prioritize the queries based on urgency.
g) Twitter is great for marketers.
Twitter contains a lot of data about customers, which marketers can capitalize on. Using the information on Twitter, marketers can make targeted ads for every marketing objective they have. It is a great social media platform due to its openness. The platform allows you to start a conversation with anyone whose profile fits with your target clients. Twitter analytics can also give you insight into how your activities affect your business’s Return on Investment.
h) Twitter can easily expand your market reach.
Twitter has so many users all over the globe. Your followers can view every post you make. When they respond to or like your post, their followers can also see it. This matrix widens the scope of people viewing you. With the consistent posting of quality content, you can increase your market reach, which can be converted to loyal customers and people who will further evangelize your business.
You can alternatively use influencers on the platform to widen your reach further.
How To Use Twitter for Marketing?
Once you have decided to use Twitter to market your business, you need to know how to do it right to benefit from it fully. To do that, you will be required first to create a marketing strategy.
Approaching social media marketing should always involve a plan. Using Twitter for marketing is no different. You need first to understand how the platform works and how it fits in your overall strategy if you are to succeed. Before embarking on the journey of using Twitter for marketing your business, you need to:
1. Set clear goals.
Goals give a clear direction as to where you want your marketing campaign is going. They also help you know if your strategy is working since you can map it against what you want to achieve. Create goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). A smart objective gives a clear and concise picture of what you are to achieve and in what period of time.
2. Check your competition.
You want to be doing better than your competitors. Also, you don’t want your followers to see you as a copycat. Since no idea ever thought is new under the sun, you will have to check your competitors’ marketing campaigns to see what they are doing. That way, you can define and refine your campaign by taking advantage of their weaknesses or the gaps in their campaigns.
3. Create guidelines.
You should have a guideline on how to keep your communications clear and consistent. Guidelines will help you or your team prevent mistakes on Twitter. The voice used on your account should be consistent. Other guidelines should include how to use branded hashtags, when and where to use emojis, and format links.
4. Plan your content.
Running a business Twitter account will need you to be meticulous in the way you share content. Repeating the same type of content may make your account monotonous. In that case, it is essential to plan ahead of time which content will you will post and when to ensure that consistency is maintained. Additionally, planning will also help you determine the best times to post to attract the most engagement.
5. Measure your impact.
A strategy is not complete until it can be measured to see its performance at work. Once the strategy is underway, you are to evaluate your efforts regularly against your set goals. This evaluation will ensure that you stay on course and meet the objectives of your business. Additionally, it will also allow you to make adjustments to meet your goals.
How Can You Use Twitter For Marketing Your Business?
In order to use Twitter for marketing your business, you will need to set up a Business Twitter account by creating an account on Twitter and verifying it, and creating a password. Your business account on Twitter will not be complete without a proper profile. The profile picture should communicate your business clearly, and this could often be your business logo. Your bio should briefly describe your business. With your account up and running, you can use it to market your business in the following ways:
1. Building your Twitter following
The best way to boost your business is to grow an engaged and well-targeted Twitter following. There are many ways in which you can increase your Twitter followers, with the best one requiring that you are more active on the platform. You can follow other users who post content related to your business and engage them regularly.
In a case where being active on Twitter is tough, you can
a. Automate your tweets b. Create a posting schedule and follow it to the letter c. Create time to respond to tweets
A vast Twitter following will drive traffic to your website, as earlier mentioned.
2. Research your target audience
Knowing your audience will play a great role in helping you figure out the type and variation of content that is likely to resonate with them and the times to post to get maximum engagement. Knowledge of your audience is critical in ensuring that your strategy works as intended.
You can further research the type of audience your competitors have to identify common variables in the type of followers. In this way, you can tailor your campaign to attract your competitors’ followers without necessarily stealing them.
3. Engage influencers
Engaging with influencers can be good for your business since it can increase your Twitter following, increase engagement on your tweets, increase website traffic, and consequently widen your market reach. You can engage influencers by either interacting with their content or paying them to market your business. Either way, their followers will notice your Twitter account, and your follower base will start growing.
4. Manage your feeds
As you follow more people on your account, your timeline will start getting crowded. You can manage your feeds by using lists. Lists will help you organize the tweets you want to see to save time. A Twitter list is a small feed of a select group of the people you want to see. The list keeps you from wasting time scrolling through tweets that are not relevant to your business. That way, it will be possible for you to interact with only those who are valuable to your business more efficiently.
5. Make use of Twitter custom audiences
Twitter Custom Audiences helps you to get your Twitter ads to the targeted audience. Potential customers include your e-mail list and visitors to your website. By sending them ads, Custom Audience puts your potential clients one step closer to conversing with you. It is more beneficial to use it when you are promoting something.
6. Be consistent and regular in your tweeting
Tweeting in a short timespan can lead to fast follower growth. Consistency ensures that your followers know that you are present. Frequency should also be an essential part of your strategy without going overboard.
7. Post varying content
People on Twitter are looking to add value to themselves. You can meet this need by posting valuable content in the form of videos, pictures, articles, and infographics. Mixing up content makes following your account exciting and thus helps to boost engagement.
8. Use hashtags correctly
Hashtags are a significant tool for getting tweets in front of more people. Hashtags also help brands get more engagement. However, this is only possible if used correctly. The secret to harnessing the power of using hashtags is using the right hashtag. Use one or utmost two hashtags per tweet.
9. Pin tweets
Twitter has a function that allows a user to pin a tweet at the top of their timeline. Anyone viewing your profile will see the pinned tweet. Pinned tweets are good for curating your profile viewers’ first impression. Therefore, your pinned tweets should draw attention to your audience.
10. Use catchy headlines
People are most likely to click on tweets with great headlines. For this reason, it is essential to have a headline that will compel your audience to take action. There exist online tools that can help you find a catchy headline that will motivate traffic to your website.
11. Make use of Twitter analytics
You can only know how good your strategy is if it is getting your results. You can use Twitter Analytics to help you in this regard. Twitter Analytics will allow you to see how many views you are getting in your tweets and how much engagement your tweets generate. Properly looking into your analytics will tell you what your audiences like the most about your tweets, whether it is the images, the links, the videos, or the hashtags.
Twitter Analytics also keeps track of other important metrics such as impressions and clicks. Additionally, it can show you how individual tweets are performing. This information will help you optimized your tweets for maximum gain for your business.
12. Handle problems through Direct Messages
Handling individual customer complaints through direct messages will help you deal with the problems better, as direct messages do not limit one’s character use. Having one-on-one interaction with your customers elevates your image to the customers as a caring business owner.
Conclusion
Twitter has proven to be beneficial to many businesses across the world. With proper marketing strategies, companies have seen their businesses grow and make significant sales. However, with many users on the platform, maneuvering one’s way to gain from it maximumly is a great fit. It requires patience, consistency, and the will to keep pushing the business to greater heights. Keeping your Twitter audience engaged is paramount in achieving this fit. The proper engagement of audiences follows the closing of business deals and loyalty from customers.
